Also, for the topic: unless it can be hidden easily, I really do not want a minimap. The one in EU4 was pretty useless regarding information displayed and only marginally useful for navigation.
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I care more about having mapmode buttons on the right than the minimap itself, ngl. I agree with others that the Vic 3 style dropdown/”lenses” menu is stupid and annoying to use. Eu4/Imperator mapmode buttons are perfect, you can customize them too.
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What do you think the crown estate is?
What "needless identification with the leader"? EU4 has destroyed everyone's knowledge of actual history it seems, there were no nations until relatively recently in time - the monarch WAS the nation, he/she was definitely not some annoying hinderance or nice bonus. A medieval/early modern state was centered around the monarch and his court, and his word was law just like his will was the will of the nation. Stop identifying with the territory itself when playing an EU-game, there's V3 and HOI4 for that. In EU5 we play as the ruler, albeit not as his dynasty in the CK-sense.
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I have honestly never actually used the minimap in EU4. Ever. And I have over 2000 hours in that game.
It's just very uninformative and unnecessary to have a minimap when the whole game is a map.
It's just very uninformative and unnecessary to have a minimap when the whole game is a map.
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The state. Is the crown estate, or whatever the equivalent name is for republics, the personal property of the head of state in a republic? Or a prince-bishopric at that?
Ok so the game should be over the moment your monarch dies then got it
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?
The state is nothing but the monarch (or the elected ruler of a republic, or the head of a theocratic entity), his court and his appointed officials. The state didn't exist independently from the ruler, that wasn't the case until the 18th century (in its earliest forms).
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Not really. The state is also the framework around these persons and its laws. Of course, any state consists of its citizens and is an abstract thing. Modern states are no different.
But if you were merely the ruler, then you should also control all your personal unions the same was as your actual country. The crown is more than just the monarch who wears it. The ruler is an important aspect, but the player is not really identical with them. Apart from some stats and claims, the person is interchangeable in the game and you will go through dozens of rulers, hence the picture of your current monarch is much less interesting than the representation of the country by its symbols (i.e. coat of arms / flag). That said, if there is a good reason to have the monarch's menu always available, then it can be displayed, but the primary focus should be the entity you actually control - the country.
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Damn, I must have hallucinated like 90% of the "big map strategy" genre then.
Who you play in a game is not the same thing as how we should construct the concept of a country/state/whatever in a certain period when doing historical analysis. The spirit of the nation idea as we're talking about it is a modern game design invention anyway, even if it's inspired by older thought.
You play as a dynasty/character in CK not because that's how countries were constructed in that period (though that is certainly the motivation behind the design choice) but because the entire game is constructed around the idea that you are playing as a specific person who is part of a specific dynasty and who lives in a world full of other specific people. That framing informs every aspect of the game - what the player can do and not do, how diplomacy functions, the way that events and decisions are written, etc. CK isn't always perfectly 100% strict about limiting you to exactly what a person could do and nothing else, but nevertheless I think it's hard to argue that the game isn't built from that perspective. That is why CK game-overs in the way it does. You could easily make a grand strategy game set in the same part of the world in the same time period where you clearly do not play as a character, by designing a game that does not have the same fundamental framing. Conversely I think we would agree that modern countries are not fundamentally defined by the current president/prime minister in the same way that medieval countries were, and yet you could easily make a grand strategy game where you clearly play as the president/PM and design the game in such a way that you are constrained in ways similar to how a president/PM might be constrained. And in that game you would certainly not play as the spirit of the nation.
When I look at what I've seen EU5, I don't see anything that makes me think the game is designed around the idea that you play as a character, as the ruler, however you want to name it. Certainly not in the very direct sense of getting a game over on ruler change, civil war, succession crisis, government change, etc. And also not in the more nuanced sense of the player's powers being crafted from the perspective of "what could the ruler do." Therefore my conclusion is that you play the spirit of the nation, just like in most strategy games (and that is not said as criticism).
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Absolutely love the minimap, I can't explain why, but it makes me feel more "insignificant". Like, I only control that portion of the world and yet there is so much remaining and going on. Without a minimap I tend to focus on myself and forget what's outside, but with a minimap I get reminded that there is a big world out there.
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The only abstract way in which a state existed in these times were in the form of de jure titles (and the notion that a certain ruler with a certain title ought to rule certain territories). The title "King of Sweden" arguably existed independently from any one sitting monarch, but the title itself was moot if there was no monarch at all. One might therefore argue that we play as the top title of our realm in the EU-series, but that is still just a way of saying that we play as whomever holds the title (which is the ruler).
We really should, and the fact that the devs elected otherwise is no proof of us playing as anything other than the ruler. The format of personal unions is 100% a gameplay-oriented construct, it does not reflect how unions worked irl or how they "should" work in-game.
The fact that we will go through numerous rulers in the 500 years of the game timeline doesn't mean that any one ruler is interchangable - we play as the ruler at any given point in time, and at that point in time that ruler is the central entity of the state which we control through the game mechanics.
The crown is more than just the monarch who wears it, of course, because rulership is a complex system of personal relationships and legal contracts. There can be no king without officials, an army and territory to rule, but that doesn't detract from the fact that there can also be no officials, army and territory without a king/ruler at the top as well.
And the entity we control is centered around the monarch/ruler, which is much more important than the flag (that only represents the ruler in question) and should therefore be visible at all times like in CK2/3.
The fact that we play as the ruler doesn't in and of itself inform or influence any mechanics of the game - it's just a fact, and should be represented by the ruler being visible on the screen.
What you call "the spirit of the nation" is just the ruler, you just elect to use a different word because you're used to make a difference between the CK-series and the EU-series.
Sure, why not.
Playing as the ruler doesn't require the game to be an RPG, just the fact that nations during the time of the game were centered and built around the ruler is enough to say that you're playing as the ruler. Again, mechanics are pretty much irrelevant - if what you're doing is akin to ruling you're playing as the ruler, you can't escape that fact by making up a "spirit of the nation" that does what the ruler does but isn't the ruler.
That is not needed to say that you're playing as the ruler.
The spirit of the nation doesn't exist, the ruler was an individual as well as an institution and the centre of a state. It's ok to be able to do things that the ruler individual logically wasn't able to immediately do while still holding true that you're playing as the ruler. This fact needs neither inform nor govern how game mechanics are designed, they only make it reasonable (and according to me - necessary) for the ruler to be visible at the screen at all times.
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In the real world this may be true, but the video game design concept definitely exists. The fact that developers themselves sometimes mention it explicitly makes this obvious, if non-developers mentioning it somehow wasn't enough.
Which has no bearing on who you play as in a game. Who you play as in a game is solely a decision made by the developers.
The whole point is that you are not doing what the ruler does. The entire purpose of the spirit of the nation conceit is to handwave away why the player in many games does all kinds of things the ruler (or whatever other specific real-world entity) did not and could not.
And the concept has been around for a long time; it's not something new nor was it invented to distinguish between EU and CK.
It doesn't need absolute strictness, but who you play as in a game is 100% defined by the game mechanics, flavor, and presentation. It is 0% defined by the lore/history of whatever setting the game takes place in, though that setting may be a major factor in the developers' design choices. The game tells you who you play as, not outside knowledge of the setting.
I have no problem with the ruler being on the top bar.
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This thread got way off topic, lol. I like having a minimap. I've used the little red dots to see if any enemy forces are within my fog of war. And moving my camera between continents with a single click is nice. If you don't like having a minimap, they should allow you to hide it. Easy peasy
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Agreed. I've said it before and I'll say it again, PDX games are at their best when they give the player agency, both in the game world and on a meta level, and the option to turn your minimap on and off is a good one
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I don't use the minimap. For jumping around continents I would prefer RTS-style camera location hotkeys, for example press ctrl+F1 to save a location, then later on you can press F1 to center the camera on that location.
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how is that easier than left clicking on the minimap? I think the minimap would serve well during global play, where you may have two or three simultanious wars on different continents. I use this in EU4 to see where enemy armies are... I have no idea why they went with no minimap but I think it's because this version of the engine is the same exact one we've seen in vic3.
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Well I find it difficult to accurately click on the minimap since it's so small, and I certainly don't want it to be bigger and take up even more of the screen.